NICKEL AND DIMING CALIFORNIA TAXPAYERS

Sadly, that’s what Gov. Jerry Brown and his spend-happy henchmen in the Legislature appear bent on doing to hapless California taxpayers.

Having hoodwinked voters into raising the income tax and the sales tax, and a state board increasing the gasoline tax effective July 1, Brown and company are now going for the little stuff.

The latest: a proposal to let state courts slap the public with a $10 fee just to access files at county courthouses. The proposal also would double the fee for copying court files to $1 per page. Taxpayers already have spent more than $500 million on a $2 billion statewide computer system that would have let them access records online for free, but court officials last year announced they were scrapping the system.

Imposing fees on people who want to access public documents clearly infringes on their right to do so. As Peter Scheer, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, told this newspaper, “At some point there is enough of a barrier that the fee is the equivalent of the denial of access.”

Small news organizations could be hurt as well. Reporters might review dozens of files in a single day. The fees could have a chilling effect on their ability to report the news.